The system of
checks and balances established by the United States Constitution is widely
recognised as a foundation for modern representative democracy. By distributing
power (more or less evenly) between the legislative, executive and judicial
branches of the federal government, the U.S. Constitution gave birth to one of
the longest lasting, most stable democratic republics in the world today. But
this document also created another lesser-known system of checks and balances,
one between the federal government and the individual states, each of which is
governed by its own constitution and retains a considerable amount of
sovereignty within the American political system. While the “Supremacy Clause”
(Article VI, Clause 2) of the U.S. Constitution establishes that all states are
subject to federal law, the 10th amendment specifically limits
the federal government’s authority to those powers explicitly “delegated” to it
by the Constitution. And the history of the United States has been profoundly
affected by the permanent power struggle between these two levels of
government. This paper will briefly describe the evolution of this power
struggle and address the impact it still has on contemporary American society.